


i'd have thrown myself to the wild for her

by intentandinvention



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Brisby is a creep, Canon Typical Violence, Comfort, Explicit Consent, F/F, Hugs, Internalised Racism, Past Corvo/Jessamine, because Corvo does not get enough hugs, f!Corvo, fuck the Loyalists, not actually literally, sort of anyway gender expression conformity is for other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 03:06:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11027310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentandinvention/pseuds/intentandinvention
Summary: After Lady Boyle's last party, Corvo is cold and soaked to her skin, tired of people in general and the Loyalists in particular, and desperately missing Jessamine. Cecelia offers her comfort, and maybe more.





	i'd have thrown myself to the wild for her

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Elisabeth Hewer's poem "Dove Hands"

When Brisby puts his hand on the sleeve of her coat as he attempts to recruit her for his little kidnapping venture, Corvo resists the urge to pull away and instead waits for the man to notice the hard shapes of her spare dart cuff beneath the cloth. It doesn't take long; his hand springs away as if he's been burnt, and his eyes widen behind the grotesquerie of a mask. 'Anyway... you'll know where to find me should you decide to take me up on my generous offer,' he stutters.

He waits for a few seconds, obviously expecting a reply. Corvo watches, and says nothing. They're of a height and, like most of the people she's encountered whilst wearing the mask, he thinks she's a man – so he backs away, taking a champagne flute from a nearby maid and gulping it in one before he can gather the nerve to turn his back on her.

She leans in a corner of the receiving room and observes the party, considering her next move. A quick scout of the upstairs rooms has revealed that her target is Esma, and that in turn has given her a simple enough plan should she wish to kill the woman. Waverly would have been more difficult, Lydia easier, but Corvo knows Esma, and is fairly confident that she can persuade her upstairs regardless of what Esma thinks is beneath her mask (or, more to the point, inside her breeches and jerkin). She’s not even going to think about Brisby’s disgusting offer. She can have Esma dead inside an hour and be back to Emily in two.

Corvo’s not blind; Emily's as much a hostage at the Hound Pits as she was at the Cat. Certainly, her tower is a more luxurious prison than the attic room, but Callista's as much a jailer as the Madam was, although perhaps not so aware of it. Corvo hasn't wasted her time at the Hound Pits, of course. She had the exits scouted the day after her arrival, and if she needs to leave with Emily it'll be a simple enough matter, but whilst she's not there Emily might as well be at the Cat. Not to mention the possibility that she's all too aware of, that the people who killed Jessamine could be sent to recover the new Empress. Every time Samuel docks his boat she looks for figures on the rooftops, blood spatters on the men who meet her.

She doesn't really have a choice here, no matter how nice the Loyalists are being to her at the moment. But she knows Esma from court and would wager that the woman has had nothing to do with Burrows other than sex and money, neither of them things that Esma attaches much value to. It's Waverly who does the politics in that family (the sisters attain influence in different ways, all equally successful), and Waverly was a good friend of Jessamine's.

But the Loyalists have Emily, so Corvo persuades the Lady Boyle upstairs, seducing Esma the way Jessamine used to seduce her, and when Esma reaches the top of the stairs in front of her, Corvo reaches around as if to embrace and chokes her out instead, gloved hand over her mouth to stifle her screams until she goes limp. Corvo counts two minutes in her head, just in case, and leaves the body on the bed, and is too disgusted with herself to bother looking through the place for things that Piero can sell. She goes down to the cellars instead, and Brisby raises his head in delight when he sees her.

He only just has time to finish his greeting before she yanks him out of the boat, knee firm in the small of his back as she holds his head underwater until he stops thrashing. Some people don’t deserve to live.

Samuel doesn't look at all surprised when she hauls herself shivering over the side of the boat, water streaming from her mask and greatcoat. 'Job done?' he asks as he pushes off the canal wall towards the river.

'She's dead,' Corvo replies through chattering teeth, pulling off her mask and tipping water out of it, 'and Void help me when Waverly and Lydia find her.'

He shakes his head as she sits in the stern, at the edge of the retreating ratlight. 'No doubt it will,' he murmurs, and she pretends not to hear him as she pulls off the heavy, sodden greatcoat and starts the long task of wringing it out over the side.

The Wrenhaven is a giant’s road of shimmering lights and gulping darkness in the night, and Corvo tries to stop shivering, grateful that High Cold is unusually warm this year. Her breath still clouds in the air, but at least there isn't ice on the water like there will be in Morley. The enormous mass of the coat is a pain to handle with gloves, so she peels them off and tucks them into her belt, ignoring Samuel's sideways glance. The Mark shines glossy in the glancing riverlight, more like paint than a tattoo, but there's barely anyone else on the river tonight to see it, just the usual whalers with their grisly cargos and loud voices.

She's managed to control the shivering by the time Samuel pulls in at the dock, and she slings her coat over her arm and ignores Farley's attempt to hand her out of the boat. Teague is there too, arms folded and eyes appraising as usual (she'd considered blacking them for him before realising that he looks that way at everyone, and as far as she can tell he’s just taking notes for future use), but unctuous little Treavor is missing, probably putting more overtime in on his attempt to drink himself to death. Or avoiding her in the hope that she'll forget he owes her for that duel that he conveniently neglected to mention. The men had laughed when she'd presented his letter, but the suggestion that they were afraid of shooting a woman had got Lord Foxface to the duelling line. She'd slowed time and switched to a sleep dart, and they'd mocked her opponent for fainting.

Farley clearly wants to clap her on the back and congratulate her on a job well done, but she remembers Esma clawing at her heavy sleeves, trying desperately to breathe, and can’t let him touch her. She nods curtly at him and takes the steps two at a time, blinking to Piero's balcony and then to the attic, and once the window is shut she slides to the floor beneath it, coat and mask beside her and back against the sill, heart beating too fast.

Someone’s lit a lamp in her room next door, and the streetlight outside is on. The gold glow lengthens the shadows, darkens them to the pitch of the water that swallowed Brisby’s last breaths. She's sick of them all, sick to her stomach (except perhaps of Samuel). The urge rises to talk to someone who’s not intent on _using_ her, but Emily will be long asleep by now, Callista with her; Lydia barely tolerates Corvo, muttering about her not knowing a woman's place, Wallace stays glued to his master’s side, and Cecelia disappears at night - where to, she’s not sure.

Corvo reaches into the breast pocket of the coat lying sodden beside her, and her fingers close on her dead lover's beating heart. When the black-eyed bastard first gave it to her she'd stared until the voice had sounded in her ears, full of the resigned sadness she became so used to in the months before Jessamine's death. She tried to communicate at first, and the Outsider watched her with eyes as dead as Jessamine as she waited for the lump of flesh and metal to respond and it didn’t. There was an empty carriage car there, hanging over the Void, and she curled up on the floor around all that was left of Jessamine and wept, and wondered if she could stay there forever.

There's a noise in the hallway, and Corvo blinks halfway across the room and lands crouched and facing the door, crossbow aimed squarely at Cecelia and her pile of dry clothes and towels.

To her credit, faced with a jumpy former Royal Protector, Cecelia just crouches slowly, lowering her armful of cloth to the floor, her eyes on Corvo's the whole time. 'I didn't mean to disturb you, Lord Protector,' she says as she stands again, hands open before her, and that's not an apology like Callista would make, or an accusation like Lydia, it's just a statement of fact.

In Corvo's free hand, the Heart pulses softly and Jessamine whispers, not unkindly, of common work. Cecelia's eyes widen slightly, and Corvo wonders if she's somehow heard but she's looking at Corvo's face. 'I'll leave these here,' she says, and turns to go as Corvo tastes saltwater on her lips.

'Wait. Please,' Corvo hears herself say. She makes her hands slip the heart into the too-small pocket on her jerkin, put the safety catch back on Piero's deadly little mistress, hastily wipe the tears from her face with gloves that are just as damp, and when she's done that Cecelia is still in the doorway, head cocked to the side.

Corvo doesn't know what she wants to say, and the cold breeze comes in through the open window and stirs up her sodden clothes, making her shiver.

'You look like a drowned cat,' Cecelia says into the silence that seems to stretch over the space between the two of them, and she crouches and picks up a balding towel from the pile, throws it. Corvo catches it and dries her face, then towels her hair, wringing the water out carefully to give herself time to think. She knows less than nothing about Cecelia. The woman is watching her in the golden half-light, hand resting calmly on the door frame as if she's deliberating whether to leave or come in.

It doesn't take Corvo long to dry her hair, and she's glad she's always kept it short instead of growing it in Dunwall fashion. She rubs her ears dry, drops the towel and runs her fingers through her hair to smooth it.

'Lydia wants to wash your clothes,' Cecelia says quietly. 'We saw you come in. I won't ask why you're soaked to the skin.'

Corvo suspects she knows half of it already - Cecelia doesn't strike her as unobservant. 'Easiest way out of the Boyle Manor is through the cellar and the water gate,' she says anyway, picking at the water-swollen laces of her jerkin. Cecelia glances down at Corvo’s fingers and then meets her eyes again, a slight flush under her freckles.

Corvo considers turning away, but she’s not ashamed of her body, and Cecelia can always leave if she’s uncomfortable. Corvo needs to get out of these clothes, though - mild High Cold or not, Esma's death will have been wasted if she dies of pneumonia. She unlaces her jerkin, takes note of the way Cecelia's attention travels deliberately downwards as her breasts are loosened from its confines. The cold air hits her thick linen shirt as she stoops to put the jerkin on the floor, and when she looks up again Cecelia’s watching her, evaluating gaze accompanied by a faint smile. Corvo brings her hand slowly up to the buttons on her shirt, twists the first one open and watches the younger woman's pale skin flush.

She'd meant to just remove her jerkin and take her clothes, but Cecelia's quiet, intense attention has become nothing less than a challenge, perhaps even a request. However, her skin is pebbling in the cold, so she crosses her arms beneath her breasts and gestures with her chin towards the pile of clothing apparently forgotten in the doorway. 'If you’re staying, could you bring that through? Teague and Farley are still down in the yard, and I've given them quite enough to think about tonight.'

She meets Cecelia's eyes again, challenging, and thinks of saying that she doesn't have to, that she can leave, but if there’s one thing she’s learned about Cecelia it’s that the woman doesn't do things she doesn't want to. Corvo turns, goes into her room and smiles when she hears footsteps behind her. She stands in the centre of the worn rug, and Cecelia pushes the pile of clothes and discarded towels onto the shelves and turns back, arms folded, composed. It's that way, then. Corvo rolls her shoulders, unstraps the leather roll of spare sleep darts from her left arm and spare bolts from her right, undoes the rest of her shirt buttons and drops the wet linen to the rug, and she’s naked now from the waist up. She never bothers with a breastband like most Gristol noblewomen; dressing like a man as she has since she was twelve has its advantages, mainly in the soft, flexible jerkin that draws tightly enough around her chest that she can run and fight without discomfort. The Loyalists are bastards, every one of them, but at least they thought to recover her clothes.

Cecelia's eyes are drawn to Corvo’s chest, and Corvo presses down the urge to cover herself and bends to unbuckle her boots at the knee, one by one. Jessamine used to saunter up behind her, bend over and snake her hands up to play with her breasts; Cecelia, of course, doesn't move. Corvo swallows the worry that she’s made a mistake and steps out of the boots. The floor is hard and cold even under the rug and her thick woolen stockings, but she puts the long boots to the side and straightens up, stretching.

‘Your back is new scars all over,’ Cecelia says suddenly. She doesn’t sound disgusted, or cruel. Just a little surprised.

Corvo doesn’t want to remember Coldridge. Making up her mind, she crosses to the shelves where Cecelia is standing, reaches behind the other woman for the other dry towel, her breasts brushing Cecelia’s jacket for just a moment. She steps back then and rubs her cold skin vigorously, feels the blood and warmth creep slowly back in even though the towels here are thin, coarse imitations of the huge fluffy things they had in the Tower. If only there was a hearth up here. She avoids Cecelia’s eyes, and when she’s done with the towel, as dry as her upper half is going to get, she reaches for a shirt.

Cecelia catches her wrist, slim fingers not quite closing onto her skin. The woman’s other hand skims over her jaw, asking but not demanding. She looks up, meets bright green eyes. ‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t nice of me,’ Cecelia says firmly, the hint of a blush behind her freckles. ‘It can’t be something you want to recall.’

‘Not exactly,’ Corvo replies.

It’s uncomfortable like this, so she steps in carefully, shivers as she feels Cecelia’s other hand slide into the hair at the back of her neck. She rolls her head against it, luxuriating in the intimacy of the touch (Jessamine would always cup the back of her head as they kissed) and closes her eyes when Cecelia’s grip tightens just a little, and lets Cecelia pull her head down, nip at her bottom lip tentatively. The other woman is warm, and as Corvo eases their mouths open she relaxes just a little, her grip on Corvo’s wrist becoming a caress that slides over her arm and reaches around for her waist. This time it’s Cecelia who steps in, close enough to press Corvo’s breasts against her shirt.

The last person Corvo kissed (the only person Corvo has ever kissed) was Jessamine, just before the disastrous tour of the Isles, and at first she can’t place her finger on how Cecelia differs. It isn’t that Jessamine only kissed in a particular way - her kisses could be slow, imperious, teasing and anything else depending on her quicksilver moods – but, she realises, Jessamine’s kisses always had years of familiarity behind them. They’d fitted one another, the Empress and her bodyguard; Jessamine’s head had fitted perfectly into the curve of Corvo’s neck and shoulder, Corvo’s breasts had fitted perfectly beneath Jessamine’s hands. With Cecelia it’s different. Cecelia kisses with part of her held back, even as she pulls Corvo closer by her waist and by warm fingers tangled in her damp hair. They don’t quite fit one another. Still, nothing in Corvo’s life quite fits her at the moment except Piero’s mask, so maybe that’s just right.

It’s Cecelia who breaks away (Corvo could lose herself in the almost-forgotten press of soft lips, in the teasing suggestion of _more_ ), but she doesn’t drop her hands, just steps back a little, neck craned so that she can meet Corvo’s eyes past the brim of her cap. ‘I’m not her,’ she warns, although there's no bitterness in it. ‘I won’t ever be her.’

Corvo swallows, closes her eyes against the prickling there. ‘No,’ she agrees. ‘I know.’ She wonders if her relationship with Jessamine was somehow common knowledge despite their efforts to keep it behind closed doors, or if Cecelia’s just speculating.

Whichever it is, the assurance seems to be enough: Cecelia nods briskly. ‘Your breeches and stockings are soaked through as well,’ she notes, suddenly businesslike again. ‘You should take them off. I’ll turn around if you want to put something else on,’ she adds, hesitant.

Corvo can’t help the smile, or the kiss she touches to the woman’s forehead. Just like Jessamine, scolding her for not looking after herself properly. There’s no graceful way to remove breeches or underclothes, so she makes quick work of it, undoing straps and laces and stepping out of it all, pushing down the clinging wool stockings and leaving everything in a heap on the boards. The night air crowds in on her bare skin, and when Cecelia steps forward with the towel she accepts it gratefully and rubs at her legs until they’re tingling. She can almost feel the woman’s eyes on her, and finally she looks up, head on one side.

‘I’ve stripped naked in front of you and _you’re_ being shy?’ she jokes gently.

Cecelia glowers the way she does when Lydia scolds her, her cheeks burning, and refuses to meet Corvo’s eyes. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she mutters after a moment.

That stops Corvo in her tracks. Jessamine always called her beautiful — but that was before months in Coldridge, before torture and near-starvation, when the only scars she had were ones earned saving Jessamine’s life. She’s tall for a woman, broad-shouldered, and in Gristol her skin’s just past the wrong side of dark to pass as anything but Serkonan. Now she’s glad of the mask because it hides her broken nose and the scar that twists the edge of her face, and her back is a tangle of stripes from scourging. She’s glad there aren’t any mirrors in the Hound Pits, because she’s seen her reflection in the water and she’s not sure it’s her anymore. But Cecelia thinks she’s beautiful. Not that it matters – beautiful or plain, she's the best hand with a sword in Gristol and Serkonos together, and that’s what will save Emily, that’s what matters. But hearing it still makes her heart beat faster, even when it’s not Jessamine saying it. Even when she’s not entirely sure what she’s doing, undressing for a near-stranger in a dusty pub attic.

Cecelia moves to take the towel, and as Corvo holds it out, the Mark on the back of her hand glimmers in the lamplight. She flinches, anticipating disgust or perhaps fear, but Cecelia shrugs, her gaze skating over the lines only casually. ‘You’ve spent too much time with them that think they’re better than the rest of us,’ she observes, folding the towel and placing it on the dresser as Corvo steps out of the nest of sodden clothing and pulls a blanket from the bed to wrap herself in. ‘Down here, we all know the black-eyed boy, and fearing him would be like fearing the waves from the shore. No point in it as long as you’re not planning on drowning yourself.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ Corvo says quietly, remembering the way Brisby thrashed as she held him down, and the prostrate corpses she’s seen at purple-draped shrines.

Cecelia takes off her cap, shrugs out of her jacket and sits down, patting the bed beside her. Corvo sits as she’s bidden, blanket held close around her. It’s rough over her back and arms, not quite warm enough or big enough, and she feels tall and ungainly as she hasn’t for a long time and she’s suddenly wondering what in the Void she’s doing – with Cecelia, with the Loyalists, with Emily. The change in her mood must be almost tangible; Cecelia brings her legs up to cross them on the bed and turns to her, abruptly careful to leave space between them. ‘I’d like to kiss you again,’ she says. ‘Maybe do more. But I’ll not do anything if you don’t ask for it. I think maybe you’ve had a lot of others assuming they can do what they want with you recently, maybe so much that you’d not say no if someone actually bothered asking nicely.’

Corvo shakes herself and runs a hand through her wet hair, the blanket slipping a little down her scarred shoulder. Abruptly too exhausted to make this complicated, she leans towards Cecelia, resting her head on the other woman’s collarbone. Cecelia’s arm shifts out of the way to drape tentatively around Corvo’s shoulders, and Corvo listens to the soft thunder of her heartbeat. It’s comforting to hear a heart that isn’t Jessamine’s, that’s pumping blood through a living body.

‘This is good,’ she mutters into Cecelia’s shirt.

The redhead chuckles and rearranges Corvo’s head more firmly on her shoulder, so that it’s more of a hug than a mutual attempt to stay upright. The embrace prompts a vague realisation that Corvo doesn’t remember the last time she was hugged by anyone other than Emily, doesn’t remember the last time someone held her without restraining her. Cecelia’s fingertips feather through the dampness of her hair, tracing patterns over her scalp and weighting her eyelids. Sinking into sleep, she barely feels Cecelia’s careful shift to turn the lamplight down; in the near-dark the city is unimaginably distant, and its night-shrouded noises surrender softly to silence.

**Author's Note:**

> A one-off that's been hanging around my WIPs folder for far too long now. I am immeasurably fond of Cecelia, and I dearly love the potential dynamics of f!Corvo and will definitely one day do more with them than this. Feedback and comments always welcome; you can also poke me on [tumblr](http://intentandinvention.tumblr.com).


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